Download or read book Theology as Ascetic Act written by Nathan G. Jennings and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2010 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nathan G. Jennings's captivating study explores the ascetical logic of the various practices that Christians call theology. By establishing ascetic practice as coherent within the logic of Christian thought, Jennings argues that Christian theology itself, as an embodied Christian practice, is a type of and participant in Christian asceticism. Jennings establishes that the implications of such an understanding of Christian theology can be brought to bear on modern Christian scholarship in profound and transformative ways. With engagements and references that span a vast terrain from Patristic authors to modern systematic theologians, Theology as Ascetic Act: Disciplining Christian Discourse is a significant contribution to both modern Christian thought and the study of asceticism.
Download or read book Western Asceticism written by Owen Chadwick and published by Westminster John Knox Press. This book was released on 1881 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Students of church history and the monastic ascetic life will find this volume of much interest. Contained are three important documents of the early Christian Church: The Sayings of the Fathers, The Conferences of Cassian, and The Rule of Saint Benedict.Long recognized for the quality of its translations, introductions, explanatory notes, and...
Download or read book The New Asceticism written by Sarah Coakley and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-11-05 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Each chapter of The New Asceticism concentrates on a contentious issue in contemporary theology - the role of women in the churches, homosexuality and the priesthood, celibacy and the future of Christian asceticism - in an original thesis about the nature of desire which may start to heal many contemporary wounds. Professor Coakley is as familiar with the Bible and the Early Fathers as she is with the writings of Freud and Jung, and she draws heavily on Gregory of Nyssa's theology of desire in what she proposes. She points the way through the false modern alternatives of repression and libertinism, agape and eros, recovering a way in which desire can be freed from associations with promiscuity and disorder, and forging a new ascetical vision founded in the disciplines of prayer and attention.
Download or read book Orthodox Mysticism and Asceticism written by Constantinos Athanasopoulos and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2020-08-27 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The scholarly contributions gathered together in this volume discuss themes related to the cultural, social and ethical dimension of St Gregory Palamas’ works. They relate his mystical philosophy and theology to contemporary debates in metaphysics, philosophy of language, ethics, philosophy of culture, political philosophy, epistemology, and philosophy of religion and theology, among others. The book considers a variety of topics of special interest to Christian theologians, philosophers and art historians including church and state relations, similarities and differences between Palamas, contemporary phenomenologists and philosophers of language, and hesychast influences on late Byzantine iconography.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Mystical Theology written by Edward Howells and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-02-25 with total page 719 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of Mystical Theology provides a guide to the mystical element of Christianity as a theological phenomenon. It differs not only from psychological and anthropological studies of mysticism, but from other theological studies, such as more practical or pastorally-oriented works that examine the patterns of spiritual progress and offer counsel for deeper understanding and spiritual development. It also differs from more explicitly historical studies tracing the theological and philosophical contexts and ideas of various key figures and schools, as well as from literary studies of the linguistic tropes and expressive forms in mystical texts. None of these perspectives is absent, but the method here is more deliberately theological, working from within the fundamental interests of Christian mystical writers to the articulation of those interests in distinctively theological forms, in order, finally, to permit a critical theological engagement with them for today. Divided into four parts, the first section introduces the approach to mystical theology and offers a historical overview. Part two attends to the concrete context of sources and practices of mystical theology. Part three moves to the fundamental conceptualities of mystical thought. The final section ends with the central contributions of mystical teaching to theology and metaphysics. Students and scholars with a variety of interests will find different pathways through the Handbook.
Download or read book Asceticism and Anthropology in Irenaeus and Clement written by John Behr and published by Oxford Early Christian Studies. This book was released on 2000 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Asceticism and Anthropology in Irenaeus and Clement examines the ways in which Irenaeus and Clement understood what it means to be human. By exploring these writings from within their own theological perspectives, John Behr also offers a theological critique of the prevailing approach to the asceticism of Late Antiquity. Writing before monasticism became the dominant paradigm of Christian asceticism, Irenaeus and Clement afford fascinating glimpses of alternative approaches. For Irenaeus, asceticism is the expression of man living the life of God in all dimensions of the body, that which is most characteristically human and in the image of God. Human existence as a physical being includes sexuality as a permanent part of the framework within which males and females grow towards God. In contrast, Clement depicts asceticism as man's attempt at a godlike life to protect the rational element, that which is distinctively human and in the image of God, from any possible disturbance and threat, or from the vulnerability of dependency, especially of a physical or sexual nature. Here human sexuality is strictly limited by the finality of procreation and abandoned in the resurrection. By paying careful attention to these two writers, Behr offers challenging material for the continuing task of understanding ourselves as human beings.
Download or read book Theology on the Menu written by David Grumett and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-02-26 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Food - what we eat, how much we eat, how it is produced and prepared, and its cultural and ecological significance- is an increasingly significant topic not only for scholars but for all of us. Theology on the Menu is the first systematic and historical assessment of Christian attitudes to food and its role in shaping Christian identity. David Grumett and Rachel Muers unfold a fascinating history of feasting and fasting, food regulations and resistance to regulation, the symbolism attached to particular foods, the relationship between diet and doctrine, and how food has shaped inter-religious encounters. Everyone interested in Christian approaches to food and diet or seeking to understand how theology can engage fruitfully with everyday life will find this book a stimulus and an inspiration.
Download or read book Thoreau s Religion written by Alda Balthrop-Lewis and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-01-21 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Boldly reconfigures Walden for contemporary ethics and politics by recovering Thoreau's theological vision of environmental justice.
Download or read book Sites of the Ascetic Self written by Niki Kasumi Clements and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 2020-05-31 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sites of the Ascetic Self reconsiders contemporary debates about ethics and subjectivity in an extended engagement with the works of John Cassian (ca. 360–ca. 435), whose stories of extreme asceticism and transformative religious experience by desert elders helped to establish Christian monastic forms of life. Cassian’s late ancient texts, written in the context of social, cultural, political, doctrinal, and environmental change, contribute to an ethics for fractured selves in uncertain times. In response to this environment, Cassian’s practical asceticism provides a uniquely frank picture of human struggle in a world of contingency while also affirming human agency in ways that signaled a challenge to followers of his contemporary, Augustine of Hippo. Niki Kasumi Clements brings these historical and textual analyses of Cassian’s monastic works into conversation with contemporary debates at the intersection of the philosophy of religion and queer and feminist theories. Rather than focusing on interiority and renunciation of self, as scholars such as Michel Foucault read Cassian, Clements analyzes Cassian’s texts by foregrounding practices of the body, the emotions, and the community. By focusing on lived experience in the practical ethics of Cassian, Clements demonstrates the importance of analyzing constructions of ethics in terms of cultivation alongside critical constructions of power. By challenging modern assumptions about Cassian’s asceticism, Sites of the Ascetic Self contributes to questions of ethics, subjectivity, and agency in the study of religion today.
Download or read book Christian Asceticism written by Anselm Stoltz and published by . This book was released on 2021-08-02 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Foreword by Fr. Roberto Ferrari, OSB (Researcher in Mystical and Monastic Spiritual Theology) Anselm Stolz, the author of this book, was a Benedictine monk of the German abbey of Gerleve. He was called to Rome to teach theology at Sant'Anselmo, the Roman Benedictine college, until his early death from typhus in 1942. In his life and teaching, as his confrère Elmar Salman points out, he united Christian belief and Christian living, he not only talked the talk in books and lectures, he walked the walk, in his life and death. A lifetime later, another Benedictine professor, Gellért Békés, would recall how, when he arrived from his Hungarian monastery as a new student, his confrères left him to his own devices, and as he stood there in the dark, alone and somewhat bereft in a strange house and country, Anselm Stolz came up and greeted him - in Hungarian! - and made him feel welcomed and at home. This gesture of kindly fraternal charity by a professor to a new student inspired him. The end of Stolz's life was of a piece with this. Sent to minister to typhus patients in hospital, he caught the disease, and died of it, giving his life for others. Stolz taught that mysticism, in the sense of having a deep personal relationship with Jesus, was for everyone, not just the preserve of a spiritual élite - in this he was a precursor of the Second Vatican Council's emphasis on the universal vocation to holiness. As Salman says, this book "is the final stage of Stolz's journey towards perfection." It is, as Abbot Ogliari says "intended to provide inspiration for living with inner freedom and joy the following of Christ and his Gospel." So, in a succession of chapters, Stolz offers advice on the means to come closer to Christ, and, more importantly, to removing obstacles to Christ coming closer to us. He draws his teaching from the Scriptures and the writings of the saints, the Fathers and doctors, who have followed the same paths and so are reliable guides for us. The demands of the Gospel can seem frighteningly uncompromising, costing not less than everything. But if you have found the pearl of great price, the treasure hidden in a field, if you have found Christ, everything falls into place. And there is always that comforting "law of graduality" to fall back on, we are on a pilgrim journey, returning to our Father, so it is a progress, a process, not all to be achieved at once. All you have to do, is respond to the call of the Master, putting one foot in front of the other, following Him. This book is your invitation to set out.
Download or read book The Religion of Existence written by Noreen Khawaja and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2016-12-02 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What was existentialism? At its heart, Noreen Khawaja argues, existentialism was an effort to translate Protestant piety into a secular philosophy. While there have been many attempts to define existentialism from within as a coherent philosophical program and even as a movement, Khawaja s book is the first study of existentialism from the standpoint of intellectual history and the first to look systematically at the role that Christianity played in the development of existential thought. Focusing on Soren Kierkegaard, Martin Heidegger, and Jean-Paul Sartre, Khawaja illuminates the key moments in existentialism s reconstruction of Protestant piety within the confines of secular philosophy. Heidegger once described his work as an exercise in the piety of thinking. Khawaja s book shows the historical and systematic truth behind this metaphor. Notwithstanding Heidegger, thinking has not always been a pious act. But for a certain group of European intellectuals in the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it became so. "The Religion of Existence "will appeal to scholars of modern Christianity, philosophers, and historians of European philosophy, as well as those engaged with the theoretical and historical problems of secular and post-secular modernity. "
Download or read book Clothed in the Body written by Hannah Hunt and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-05-23 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hunt examines the apparent paradox that Jesus' earthly existence and post resurrection appearances are experienced through consummately physical actions and attributes yet some ascetics within the Christian tradition appear to seek to deny the value of the human body, to find it deadening of spiritual life. Hunt considers why the Christian tradition as a whole has rarely managed more than an uneasy truce between the physical and the spiritual aspects of the human person. Why is it that the 'Church' has energetically argued, through centuries of ecumenical councils, for the dual nature of Christ but seems still unwilling to accept the full integration of physical and spiritual within humanity, despite Gregory of Nazianzus's comment that 'what has not been assumed has not been redeemed'?
Download or read book Asceticism written by Vincent L. Wimbush and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2002-05-23 with total page 678 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From meditation and fasting to celibacy and anchoritism, the ascetic impulse has been an enduring and complex phenomenon throughout history. Offering a sweeping view of this elusive and controversial aspect of religious life and culture, Asceticism looks at the ascetic impulse from a unique vantage point. Cross-cultural, cross-religious, and multidisciplinary in nature, these essays provide a broad historical and comparative perspective on asceticism--a subject rarely studied outside the context of individual religious traditions. The work represents the input of more than forty preeminent scholars in a wide range of fields and disciplines, and analyzes asceticism from antiquity to the present in European, Near Eastern, African, Asian, and North American settings. Asceticism is organized around four major themes that cut across religious traditions: origins and meanings of asceticism, which explores the motivations and impulses behind ascetic behaviors; hermeneutics of asceticism, which looks at texts and rhetorics and their presuppositions; aesthetics of asceticism, which documents responses evoked by ascetic impulses and practices, as well as the arts of ascetic practices themselves; and politics of asceticism, which analyzes the power dynamics of asceticism, especially as regards gender, cultural, and ethnic differences. Critical responses to the major papers ensure the focus upon the themes and unify the discussion. Two general addresses on broad philosophical and historical-interpretive issues suggest the importance of the subject of asceticism for wide-ranging but serious cultural-critical discussions. An Appendix, Ascetica Miscellanea, includes six short papers on provocative topics not related to the four major themes, and a panel discussion on the practices and meanings of asceticism in contemporary religious life and culture. A selected bibliography and an index are also included. The only comprehensive reference work on asceticism with a multicultural, multireligious, and multidisciplinary perspective, Asceticism offers a model not only for an understanding of a most important dimension of religious life, but also for future interdisciplinary study in general.
Download or read book The Making of the Self written by Richard Valantasis and published by James Clarke & Company. This book was released on 2008-09-28 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading scholar of ascetical studies, Richard Valantasis explores a variety of ascetical traditions ranging from the Greco-Roman philosophy of Musonius Rufus, the asceticism found in the Nag Hammadi Library and in certain Gnostic texts, the Gospelof Thomas, and other early Christian texts. This collection gathers historical and theoretical essays develop a theory of asceticism that informs the analysis of historical texts and opens the way for postmodern ascetical studies. Wide-ranging in historical scope and in developing theory, these essays address asceticism for scholar and student alike. The theory will be of particular interest to those interested in cultural theory and analysis, while the historical essays provide the researcher with easy access to a significant corpus of academic writing on asceticism.
Download or read book To Train His Soul in Books written by Robin Darling Young and published by CUA Press. This book was released on 2011-08-31 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To Train His Soul in Books explores numerous aspects of this rich religious culture, extending previous lines of scholarly investigation and demonstrating the activity of Syriac-speaking scribes and translators busy assembling books for the training of biblical interpreters, ascetics, and learned clergy.
Download or read book Life of St Anthony of Egypt written by St Athanasius of Alexandria and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2018-08-27 with total page 54 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The biographic text of St. Anthony is presented complete in this edition for the reader's absorption and contemplation. First published in the 4th century A.D., Anthony the Great's biography was authored by Christian Saint Athanasius of Alexandria. Since its release, the book has helped spread the beliefs, practices and arduous faith of Anthony the Great. A significant progenitor of the monastic tradition, Saint Anthony lived an ascetic lifestyle in the arid lands of Egypt. Although not the earliest of religious figures committed to this tradition, through actions and preaching Anthony helped popularise and spread principles that would contribute heavily to the establishment of Christian monasteries in Europe and beyond. One event in St. Anthony's life was his encounter with the supernatural in the remote Egyptian desert. This occurrence, where the otherworldly presence tried to tempt him from his spartan philosophy of living, is much recreated in Western art and literature.
Download or read book Asceticism of the Mind written by Inbar Graiver and published by Studies and Texts. This book was released on 2021-11-22 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study explores the strategies used by Christian ascetics in the Egyptian, Gazan, and Sinaitic monastic traditions of late antiquity, drawing on contemporary cognitive and neuroscientific research to underscore the beneficial potential and self-formative role of the monastic system of mental training, confuting older views that emphasized the negative and repressive aspects of asceticism. At the same time, it sheds new light on the challenges that ascetics encountered in their attempts to transform themselves, lending insight into aspects of their daily lives. The use of both historical and cognitive perspectives allows Asceticism of the Mind to open new ways of exploring asceticism and Christian monasticism.
